Le flétrissement d'un lion
by Bo29
Summary: "We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will soon disappear." You had not believed it would be her you'd be thinking this about. An attempt at 2nd person narrative.


You drink the last of your Scotch and lower it to the table. The house is so empty; not that it had ever been filled with noise but when she was here it felt complete, whole.

You think back to when you first met her: how stupidly the first thing that you observed were her clothes, how they differed from yours. It had always been something with which you'd been able to judge who was in front of you. And yet she proved to you that first impressions could be so wrong, so utterly misleading.

Her face was what captured your interest right from the beginning. Not that her body deserved less attention, but in your life you had seen plenty of bodies – both dressed and naked. Her visage was perfect. High cheekbones, a perfect skin and yet it did not give anything away. You thought that someone with a face like hers would portray her emotions openly, and yet you spent months trying to figure out what she was feeling.

You remember looking into her eyes, knowing that a person's emotions and feeling could be discerned by a look, by the widening or narrowing of the pupils. Countless others had fallen in front of your gaze, fooling themselves that they could prevail where everyone failed. She, once again, managed to defy you and unsettle your guidelines. Her eyes seemed bottomless, and you could do nothing more than lose yourself in them trying to figure out what she was thinking. It was only much later that you were allowed access to her thoughts, to what she kept most guarded. To her heart.

The heart. Such a powerful organ: in the wrong hands it could cause so many changes. It's ironic actually if you think about it. You never understand how vital it is until it is torn from your own body: oh, you realize that you need a heart to exist, but it took you the loss of a loved one to understand how feeling it shattering prevents you from _living._ Spending your life in a fairytale world makes you think, really reflect, upon what is important because a wish of magic or a mysterious power might just take it from you. Not even those that profess the strength of their power are immune to it. We are all really just slaves of destiny, of Fate: this powerful entity that plays with each person as with chess pieces, moving one to be taken in order to advance with another.

You explain this to yourself as a way to overcome the numbness that took over when they told what had happened to her. When someone – you do not even know who had the courage to tell of the events that had transpired – dared to announce that the reason you had decided to turn your life around was no more.

You had just stood there, frozen, and suddenly feeling so very tired. If your first instinct had been to go and punish the one responsible for your pain you were now deprived of this small comfort. She had managed, as her last feat, to strike down her own slayer. She sacrificed her own life to spare the one of others. You expected nothing different from her, and yet you had the urge to go and slap her for her insolence. What an idiot.

You realize that it will not be possible. She isn't going to be around anymore: nothing you try will be able to bring her back. It was one of the first things they told you about magic. Nothing will be able to bring the dead back, no matter how much power and wit you have at your disposal. They taught you about this and about the power of True Love. True Love. Something you had searched for during the course of your whole life. You had given hope on finding it a long time ago; then a small green-eyed boy turned up to redeem you of your past errors. You had been incredulous for a long time, barely being able to make sense of the turn your life had taken, before she had come and destroyed any of your previous beliefs.

You had not expected to be swept off your feet by this woman: you had barely tolerated her in the beginning, so you had no reason to think that she would be the one to give you back your happiness. However she did that. Together with your son, you had started to hope that this would, could be your chance at happiness. Once again you opened up your heart and had it shattered it again.

Your feeling evolved without your permission, without you acknowledging them properly. You were firmly convinced you would never learn to care so deeply for another person again: and if you had ever stopped to think about it you would have never said it would be her. So you were taken completely unaware when she first kissed you. She had smirked, as she often did, and said "Well, they do say there is a fine line between love and hate.". Things had gone surprisingly smoothly after that, both of you too worn out by the tension to have a serious opposition to the flow of events.

She had managed to give you back your happiness, and now she was gone. She would not be there to tease you, to drive you insane just for the sake of it, to hold you during the night when your deepest and darkest fears would come to haunt you.

You were brought out of your musings by the noise of your son descending the stairs, pale face and puffy eyes. You almost envied him, how he could wear his emotions on his sleeve and not care who would see him. Broken.

"Mom," he said, "It's time to go to the church." You had not tried to talk to him, knowing that he too was just starting to believe in a life that was too viciously taken away from your newly created family. Your son still had to begin to grieve.

######

The service was held behind the church, since it was a sunny day. The weather too seemed to want to say goodbye to you. Ironic because you were rarely an optimist, but could not avoid from smiling whenever you woke up to find the sun shining.

The attendees were all clustered around the coffin, but they all made way for your son and yourself. Everyone seemed to respect your choice to be up there, the closest of all to the casket that held your remains. After all you shared a son, whether it was liked or not, and nobody could argue that yours was an unusual but intense relationship.

Archie held the service, and you were thankful that the job hadn't been passed to one of the fairies. You would have hated it. You never took them seriously. It was one of the few things you agreed on right from the beginning.

You do not know what he said, but you noticed that tears had started to gather on people's cheeks. You only realized you too were crying because shapes began toblur. You did not move from your spot when the psychiatrist finished, nor when the participants had thrown a fistful of earth of the coffin. You only realized that your son was there with you when everyone else had left. That you were both hoping his other mother would come back with one of her strokes of luck, and that everything would right itself. It did not happen.

The teenager then lowered to one knee and cried, sobbing out a "Goodbye mom." He then stood there silently, letting his tears fall to the ground.

You then took a step forward,lowering a single narcissus White Lion on her grave before murming "Goodbye Emma".

* * *

Hey guys, I do hope you'll forgive me for any mistakes but this just popped into my head while I was studying and just had to write it down.

It's also the first time I write fror the OUaT fandom so I hope it'll be received well enough.

Feel free to PM me if you want to talk about this little fic.

Thanks,

J


End file.
